Dr Stephen Allen
Management School
Lecturer in Organisation Studies
+44 114 222 3229
Full contact details
Management School
Room A010
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
- Profile
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Stephen is a lecturer in the Work, Employment and Organisations Group and a member of the Organisation Studies research cluster
Before joining Sheffield University Management School in 2018, he was a lecturer at Hull University Business School (2014-2018), and previously at Lancaster University Management School (having completed his PhD there in 2012).
Prior to his academic career, he held roles at a range of organisations from new business start-ups to large international companies.
- Research interests
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By working at the intersections of ideas about sustainability, reflexivity and leadership his interdisciplinary research explores how people make sense of and attempt to organise for socio-ecological sustainabilities.
The focus of his recently published work includes:
- exploring how sustainability became translated into actions at a major urban regeneration project
- developing a more complex and nuanced understanding of scale in relation to sustainable organising
- offering new approaches to sustainability in management education; considering ethical forms of organising that help to foster inclusivity and equality
- investigating senior managers’ identity tensions in relation to sustainability in the energy and power industry.
Stephen's work has been published in journals including: British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Management Learning, Organisation and Environment, and Scandinavian Journal of Management.
He is a member of the International Editorial Board for Management Learning. He has co-convened streams at the International Critical Management Studies conference.
- Publications
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Books
- Being and organizing in an entangled world : sociomateriality and posthumanism. MayFly Books. View this article in WRRO
Journal articles
- Developing decolonial reflexivity: decolonizing management education by confronting white-skin, white identities and whiteness. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 23(2), 246-264. View this article in WRRO
- A path to decolonization? Reducing air travel and resource consumption in higher education. Travel Behaviour and Society, 26, 231-239. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring Quaker organising to consider the possibilities for relational leadership. Quaker Studies, 24(2), 249-269. View this article in WRRO
- What could happen when action research meets ideas of sociomateriality?. International Journal of Action Research, 15(2), 99-112. View this article in WRRO
- The Unbounded Gatherer: possibilities for posthuman writing-reading. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 35(1), 64-75. View this article in WRRO
- Understanding Sustainability Through the Lens of Ecocentric Radical-Reflexivity: Implications for Management Education. Journal of Business Ethics, 154(3), 781-795.
- Reimagining the Scales, Dimensions and Fields of Socio‐ecological Sustainability. British Journal of Management, 29(2), 220-234.
- Lost in delegation? (Dis)organizing for sustainability. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 34(1), 29-39.
- Learning from Friends: Developing appreciations for unknowing in reflexive practice. Management Learning, 48(2), 125-139.
- Metalogue: Trying to talk about (un)sustainability – a reflection on experience. Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry.
- Living With Contradictions. Organization & Environment, 28(3), 328-348.
- Reflexivity for sustainability: appreciating entanglement and becoming relationally reflexive. International Journal of Work Innovation, 1(2), 240-240.
- Assessing Knowledge Application and Learning Capability in Organisations. The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, and Change Management: Annual Review, 6(7), 81-88.
- The learning organisation: a meta‐analysis of themes in literature. The Learning Organization, 13(2), 123-139.
Chapters
- Leadership within ‘alternatives’ In Schedlitzki D, Larsson M, Carroll B, Bligh MC & Epitropaki O (Ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership (pp. 371-382). London: Sage Publications Limited. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring relations of power in Quakers alternative forms of organizing In Godwyn M (Ed.), Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations (pp. 491-508). Edward Elgar
- Leadership and Sustainability, Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education (pp. 1067-1073). Springer International Publishing
- Being and organizing in an entangled world : sociomateriality and posthumanism. MayFly Books. View this article in WRRO
- Research group
- Grants
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Date Funder Title Amount 2023 British Academy/Leverhulme Does organizational democracy matter for ecological sustainability in organizations? £9994 with Co-I's Charles Barthold and Carole Elliott 2022 Festival of the Mind 2022 Can we fly-less? £4866 with Co-I's Judith Krauss, Renee Timmers and Matt Watson 2021-2022 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies Progressive leadership for sustainability in the face of the ecological emergency £5,100 with Dr Charles Barthold, Open University 2021 ESRC Festival of Social Sciences No leaders here! A conversation about grassroots, activist and community organizing £1,200 2019-2020 Quaker Studies Research Association Exploring leadership amongst Friends £1,000
- Teaching interests
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Stephen's key commitments for good teaching practice involve: taking a critical approach that considers and explores the politics and powers in processes of producing knowledge and teaching students; developing student’s awareness of and practices for reflection to help probe their ways of knowing by appreciating how their locations (physical, historical and relational) can shape their understanding; and, drawing upon learning perspectives that see teaching as encompassing on-going, evolving and collaborative processes of sense making which happen in dynamic environments.
The variety of non-academic jobs that Stephen undertook prior to working in academia have given him a good appreciation of the career realities for students of working in different settings.
For example, his international working spans a range of roles include: co-founding a successful start-up in London, working in the global sales and distribution team of a multinational technology company in New York, and being an account manager for a global research and consulting business.
These experiences place him well to promote learning by grounding innovative pedagogy amongst personal examples of managing and being managed.
- Professional activities and memberships
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- PhD Supervision
Stephen is interested in supervising PhD students in the following broad areas:
- Organisations and socio-ecological sustainability
- Reflexivity and reflexive practice
- Learning and education for sustainability
- Critical and post-heroic leadership